When Will Chelsea Manning Be Free? WikiLeaks Informant Confirms Prison Release Next Week

Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. army private who was sentenced to a military prison for leaking a vast trove of classified state documents to WikiLeaks, released a statement Tuesday ahead of her planned release from prison next week.

Manning is due to be released from Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas May 17, after serving seven years behind bars in male-only prisons in Iraq, Kuwait and the U.S.

Manning had been scheduled for release in 2045, after receiving a 35-year sentence, following her 2013 military court conviction for six violations of the Espionage Act and 14 other offenses related to leaking over 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to Julian Assange’s whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks.

Read: WikiLeaks Informant Chelsea Manning Appeals To Obama For Commutation Of Sentence

She confirmed the news of her release Tuesday on her Twitter account.

“For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea,” Manning said in a written statement. “I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and finally be in the outside world.”

“I hope to take the lessons that I have learned, the love that I have been given, and the hope that I have to work toward making life better for others,” she said in her statement.

In January, Former President Barack Obama commuted all but four months of Manning's remaining sentence just before leaving the White House, saying time served was punishment enough. Manning also expressed gratitude to Obama in her statement.

"I am forever grateful to the people who kept me alive, President Obama, my legal team, and countless supporters," said Manning on Tuesday. She also cited the importance of freedom and her struggles during her time in prison.

At the same time, she also spoke about her treatment in prison, saying: “Now, freedom is something that I will again experience with friends and loved ones after nearly seven years of bars and cement, of periods of solitary confinement, and of my health care and autonomy restricted, including through routinely forced haircuts.”

Chelsea Manning, formerly referred to as Bradley Manning faced new charges in July 2016 including three administrative prison offenses for her first of two suicide attempts last year. Following that she was put into solitary confinement, however, she unsuccessfully tried to end her life again in October 2016.

Read: Chelsea Manning Found Guilty Of Breaking Prison Rules

Manning was caught and taken into custody on a U.S. military base near Baghdad in 2010 after she leaked hundreds of thousands of documents from intelligence databases to WikiLeaks.

The information Manning disclosed to WikiLeaks included “Collateral Murder ”, the footage of a U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad in which two Reuters’ journalists and other civilians were killed.

In November 2016, just days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, Manning made a clemency appeal to Obama, taking “full and complete responsibility” for her “wrong” actions.

Manning, who had previously been called an "ungrateful traitor" by President Donald Trump, said the support she received through letters kept her going.

"I watched the world change from inside prison walls and through the letters that I have received from veterans, trans young people, parents, politicians, and artists," Manning said. "My spirits were lifted in dark times, reading of their support, sharing in their triumphs, and helping them through challenges of their own."